Site Mobile Navigation

Sports of The Times; Giving In Wasn't The Answer

WHEN the call for help came on the third Saturday in June, Herb Brown said, ''Yeah, sure, I'll go,'' without a moment's consideration for his professional obligations, or the possible peril. He soon learned that he had agreed to coach a playerless team that had surrendered to a plague most Americans felt secure from, until last week.

The previous day, June 15, Clemson University's Larry Shyatt had withdrawn as coach of the American men's basketball team for the World Maccabiah Games. Unbeknownst to Herb Brown, the players had followed Shyatt's lead, and his message that Israel was not the place, at that time, for a celebration of international sport.

Now it was the morning after the Philadelphia 76ers, for whom Brown served as assistant coach behind his little brother, Larry, had lost the fifth and final game of the N.B.A. finals to the Los Angeles Lakers. Brown suddenly had two weeks to persuade a dozen sets of reluctant parents to send their sons to a country where a crowded disco or a pizza place could be blown up, where violence and terrorism have been the scourge of daily life.

A migratory coach for much of his career, Brown had worked in Israel before. He understood what the Maccabiah Games meant to the global purview of Jewish athletics. ''I knew the situation, and my responsibility to the kids,'' Brown said. ''It was just something I had to do. I thought it was terrible that they had been thinking about not having the games.''

When his own grown children wondered if he knew what he was doing, he said, ''You can't live your life in a cocoon.'' Then he went to the telephone and called, among others, Dolph Schayes. ''I need help,'' Brown said.

Schayes, a Hall of Fame basketball player, had been involved with the quadrennial Maccabiah movement for more than two decades. He was already going to the games beginning in mid-July as part of the American delegation, but there was something more personal he had to share with the young men to whom he was making his plea.

His daughter, Carrie, had ordered him to ''look after'' Rachel, 20, and Carla and Abby, both 16. He assured her Israeli security would be airtight because that's what you have to believe, even when you intellectually know, as Schayes said, ''A guy who wants to blow himself up in a crowded street, what can you do?''

He said: ''I felt a little guilty using my granddaughters as examples, but I also felt deeply about the games, that basketball is the elite sport and it would've been a crying shame if the United States, of all countries, didn't have a team. Luckily, Herbie pulled it all together.''

Parent by parent, player by player, he got commitments. Eric Gingold, a 7-foot-3 law student, was the first to say, ''Coach, I'm going.'' Then Brent Fisher and Ryan Lexur, Doug Gottlieb and Matt Minoff, Gabe Frank and Matt Kaderer. Frank would bring his older brother to serve as manager. Kaderer's father would go to take game video. They all went to the opening ceremony, where Lenny Krayzelburg, the Olympic swimmer, carried the American flag, where thousands cheered the athletes (about 350 of an expected total of 600 Americans) and pushed away those darkest fears. And marveled how Israelis went on with life.

Schayes did read a story in The Jerusalem Post about two Palestinian suicide bombers who detonated not far from the stadium. Mostly, Schayes was just a typical grandfather keeping an eye out for his loved ones. ''What are you doing tonight?'' he asked one night when they met on the street.

''Having a beer with the guys,'' they said.

''Ooh, don't tell your mother.''

Better to worry about beers than bombs, he admitted. Better to continue moving forward than to cower. On the day Attorney General John Ashcroft was admitting that terrorists could still be at large, that's exactly what the American sports community was trying to do. It wasn't easy. The sacrifices and fears will not be temporary, but neither will be the benefits and rewards.

The Americans won the Maccabiah gold medal, defeating Israel in the final. Better yet, Brown said, the players established strong, lifetime bonds, and resolve. Several are soon to return to Israel to play professional ball.

''I'm not a Zionist,'' Herb Brown said. ''But I believe in what those people over there are trying to do.''